my driver side door sags, and i order some new pins and bushings. how hard is it to get the factory pins out??? do i need to just get a flat screwdriver and pop the top of the pin up?? or hows the easiest way?
If they are factory pins they will have to be cut in half and then hammered out. It is alot easier than that sounds though. I just used my dremel with a cutoff wheel, but I suppose a small hacksaw would work also. You then just knock the bushings out and put the new ones in. After that it is just a matter of lining the door back up and hammering the new pin in. It is really an easy fix, but having a friend to help handle the door is pretty much required. Oh and it is a good idea to tape an old towel or something on the edge of your door and the edge of your fender so they don't scratch each other.
Th hard part is to get the old pin out. Some were spot welded in, others were hammered so that the end mushroomed. Either way, it takes a grinder or cutter bit in a drill or Dremel tool to cut the pin or grind off the weld. Once it is off, tap the pin out with a hammer. Only remove one pin at a time so that you don't have the full weight of the door to manage. I highly recommend that you have a helper standing by to hold the door.
Once the old pin is out, lower the door and tap out the old bushings. Put the new bushings in and have the helper lift the door in place so that you can slide the new pin in. It may have to go in differently from the way it came out. That's OK, as long as you put the cotter pin in the hinge pin.
OOOPS!! The important thing to remember is that the hinge pin isn't supposed to move once you are finished. If it does, then you will end up like me - the pin moved, it wore the door hinge instead of the replaceable bushings. Now in order to fix it right, I have to remove the whole thing again and drill out the hinge to the same size as the bushing and use 2 sets of bushings in each hinge rather than one set.
The fix for the OOOPS was very time consuming and if you aren't up to some very interesting machine work, do it right so you won't have to do it again. I fixed the OOOPS but I had $43 worth of drill bit and specialized reamer plus pulling the fender off to fix it.
take an air chissil and chissel off the top then change the chissel bit to a puch and punch it out the bottom slide in the new bushins and pin just did one yesterday took 15 min